Thank you Will Lyons for including Salcombe Breeze in your round up of the best lagers in The Sunday Times at the weekend - we're honoured to be featured in the line up!
WE all remember the bad old days of lager. When Australians wouldn’t give a Castlemaine four-ex for anything else, Paul Hogan was never off our screens sipping the ‘amber nectar’ and we were all encouraged to follow the bear. The advertising was Grand Cru but the product was decidedly Vin Ordinaire. It felt as if all the money was going into the marketing, as the mega breweries flooded our pubs with bland, foul tasting, mass produced brews. The craft beer movement was a welcome jolt against this, but after an explosion of ales and seemingly endless overly complex flavoured IPAs, craft brewers are now turning their attention to the simplicity of light, crisp, lager. For the connoisseur, there are a dizzying array of styles to enjoy from fruity and dark to light and very strong. But it is the lighter style that I prefer which at their best, like sauvignon blanc or rosé, appeal with their sheer hedonistic simplicity. Simplicity is not always easy to achieve. As one brewer remarked to me: ‘It’s a difficult craft to produce a real, light lager. The hops and malts are more delicate than ale so there are fewer places to hide the off-flavours.’ https://lnkd.in/e5dq89Qw